Brett Hadlow

Clinical posts from members and guests of the Australasian Society for HIV, Viral Hepatitis and Sexual Health Medicine (ASHM) from various international medical and scientific conferences on HIV, AIDS, viral hepatitis, and sexual health.

Neglected STIs

Gwenda Hughes (National Centre for infectious Disease Surveillance and Control at Public Health, UK)

Spoke about some STIs that are neglected or under tested for. Primarily she spoke about Trichomoniasis. LGV and Enteric Infections.

TV - Seen very rarely in Australian population - but are we testing enough? A large poprtion of infections are asymptomatic. With a higher prevalence noticed in African and black women in the UK.

LGV - Endemic in Africa, Latin America and Asia. With small numbers seen in North America and Australia.

Recently there has been a resurregence in the reported cases in Europe with 25% of cases in the UK being asymptomatic and 50% of cases in Germany being asymptomatic.

Germany also found that of the positive CT results in MSM 17% of rectal infections were LGV positive and 15% of throat infections were positive for LGV. I found the throat infections very interesting.

Entric Infections - Shigella, Hepatitis A, Giardia.

Outbreaks in MSM population in the UK - found to be higher in MSM that participated in Sex parties, Chem sex (slamming) and HIV+Ve practising CLAI. Are we missing these infections. We routinely test for Hepatitis A in our MSM population and we have great programs for free vaccination of Hepatits A. But shigella is not routinely tested for and requires testing of stool samples.